During the last 40 years many innovations have been made in the industry of factory built housing and buildings. These industries are generally divided into three basic categories which are known as modular, panelized, and component. In the modular system, houses, buildings or portions of either are constructed which include a floor, walls, and roof and enclose a living space. The panelized system is different in that no enclosed living space is produced in the factory. Instead, finished wall, floor, ceiling and roof panels are built in a factory and are then transported to a housing or building site where they are assembled to enclose a living space. The component segment of the industry produces the least finished manufactured parts of building structures which are mostly assembled structural frames built of wood and would include wall frames, flooring systems, and roof trusses. The finished and precut logs used to build log homes can also be considered components.
In my copending application Ser. No. 07/799,561 filed Nov. 27, 1991, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,193,325, there are disclosed methods and systems for making modular buildings stackable and more transportable. The systems disclosed in the present application provide similar new efficiencies for shipping building panels and building components.
In the instances where panelized buildings for housing are shipped overseas, the completed or semi-finished panels have in the past been shipped inside a standard overseas container, sometimes with walls and floors and ceilings hinged to each other as in U.S. Pat. No. 4,891,919. This also has been the method for shipping components. As is well known, there exists a world wide infrastructure of equipment and ocean going ships specially designed for transporting these standard overseas shipping containers.
It is an object of this invention to provide articles of manufacture as well as an accompanying method for facilitating the road transportation and overseas shipping of both construction panels and other elongated construction components, using the existing worldwide transportation infrastructure for shipping overseas containers. It is another object to provide methods and equipment whereby panels and components may be stacked and transported without the need for utilizing an overseas container. These inventions also provide for the most economical shipment of panels and components, which, because of their size, cannot fit within the inside dimensions of a standard overseas container. Other objects of this invention include more efficient use of cargo space aboard ships, the ability to stack these new cargo units in storage, and the ability to transport them over the highways on the same semitrailers used for transporting overseas containers. These inventions provide new shipping efficiencies by eliminating the need for an overseas container and by using the structure and dimensions of the cargo itself to position the material handling hardware.